


Bibliophilia

by AislingSiobhan



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Allfamily angst, Fluff, Frostiron Fest 2013, Iron Man 3, Love of books, M/M, Mention of Happy/Pepper, Mentions of Genderfluid!Loki, Pinch hitter, So it's not very long, Thor 2, Thor: The Dark World, loki in disguise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 15:04:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1108266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AislingSiobhan/pseuds/AislingSiobhan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the 2013 Frostiron Fest (pinch hitter) Request #65. Tony takes Loki to a book store (because Loki really likes to read).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bibliophilia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yuuko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuuko/gifts).



Well, that turned into less of this prompt and more into: here is a giant saga to introduce this prompt followed by prompt. It was supposed to be short, dammit. 

Oh well, hope you like it Gift Requester #65. 

 

**“Bibliophilia”**

**Disclaimer:** Avengers, Thor, Loki, etc belong to Marvel, Stan Lee, et co. I make  
no money from this and own nothing, don’t sue.  
 **Summary:** Written for the 2013 Frostiron Fest (pinch hitter). Tony takes Loki to a book store (because Loki really likes to read).  
 **Warnings:** Slash. Frostiron. Frostiron Fest. Fluff. Pretty innocent all things considered. Thor 2. IM3 is mentioned. Allfamily angst. Happy/Pepper mentioned. Loki in disguise. Mentions of genderfluid!Loki.  
 **Rating:** PG-13.  
 **A/N:** The bookshop I described is a real place, in Russell Square, London and it is amazing. 

_XXX_

**Words:** 2,416  
 **Chapter 1**  
Three years ago if anyone had asked Tony if he thought Loki was attractive, well, he would have said yes. He had eyes, after all, and a healthy libido. But if someone asked about their relationship? Yeah, no. Tony would have laughed in their faces and probably thrown them out of his house after a few well thought up insults. 

If someone had asked him now about his relationship with Loki, Tony would probably just stare at them in confusion, because how did they know? As far as the world was concerned, Tony Stark was dating Lukka Olsson, PR wizard and literature-loving genius who Pepper had hired to clean up Tony’s shit for him. 

It all started after that big mess in Greenwich, London, with the flying spaceships and the elf-aliens and Jane Foster moving objects from one dimension to another without inviting Tony over to play. Tony and the other Avengers (who had all miraculously disappeared when Killian was trying to kill him, but when Thor needed some help, well… how high, you know?) had arrived in London, jet lagged and irritable, left to clean up the mess while Thor brought some alien war weapon back to Asgard. They were still there when Thor returned, Jane in tow, and it was after overhearing a comment about Loki that Tony put his foot in it completely. How was he supposed to know that the murdering psycho was dead, had died protecting Thor? It’s not like anyone told him anything anyway; a few more days and Tony would have gotten around the hacking the information from somewhere. 

Thor had hit him with his hammer. Fortunately, Tony had been wearing the suit because he couldn’t lift half the debris without it. Unfortunately, Tony hit back. Between them, they caused more structural damage than Malekith’s forces had and Pepper had not been impressed when she’d been told. 

Enter Lukka Olsson. 

First it had been a little awkward, because after Pepper had dumped him for Happy, Tony had gone back to banging the first pretty girl to flash him a smile (or her cleavage, he wasn’t picky), and Lukka had been rather averse to throwing them out the morning after. Preferring, instead, to make them breakfast and stare at the back of Tony’s head until he politely thanked the girls and asked them to leave. Apparently, where Lukka came from, they had something called ‘manners’. Tony’s response had been his patent eye roll; pattern repeating until he had learnt to just go back to the girls’ houses instead and sneak out the morning after without a fuss. 

After that it had been a little more awkward, because Lukka had been determined to keep Tony from doing ‘bad’ things. By which, he classified nearly everything as bad. Tony had tried to explain that Pepper had only meant the normal, destroying a city, killing a person, getting drunk and pissing in his Iron Man suit, you know, those types of bad stuff. Lukka, on the other hand, believed eating cheeseburgers instead of dinner to be bad. Also, having one night stands, because they didn’t do that where Lukka came from, or running out on meetings to fight bad guys, which actually coincided with a sudden decrease in bad guys to fight. 

And then Tony had learnt his kryptonite. Lukka liked books. A lot. Big books, small books, old books, ratty falling apart at the seams books, new books, books that smelled of dust, and books that felt like sandpaper in your hands; but he loved them all. So whenever Tony did something he knew Lukka wouldn’t approve of, Tony returned to face the music with a new book in hand (or in a carrier bag), and offered it ahead of his apologies, held like a shield before his chest and Lukka always took it with a soft, surprised smile. He looked like someone who hardly ever received gifts, and after a few months it started to make Tony feel a little guilty, that he was only buying these gifts to get out of trouble, and soon he started buying them because he liked the smile on Lukka’s face. 

Unfortunately, good things come to an end, and it was with the gift of the Poetic Edda that Lukka’s perfectly crafted persona slipped. It was the span of a blink of the eye, but between one blink and another Tony didn’t see Lukka anymore, but Loki, brother of Thor. He was dark haired and pale, standing tall and angry, eyes watering (probably thought he was being mocked), but with the look of shock on Tony’s fear, that anger drained away to be replaced with wariness. 

“You didn’t know?” Loki asked, already having reverted to his other appearance: dark blond hair that was slightly curly, his eyes still as green as his own, but his skin two shades of peach darker. 

Tony could only gargle something, terrified and excited at the same time. Loki didn’t attack him, or threaten him into remaining silent. Instead he thanked Tony for his book and sighed, “Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been doing, Stark. I’m still telling Ms Potts about last night.” He left the room and Tony let him go, and the next day Loki carried on as if nothing had happened and Tony bought him The Fault in Our Stars, and the day after Memoirs of an Infantry Soldier, and after that The Happy Prince, and Loki smiled at him as he accepted each one in turn, but on the last day he looked sadder than Tony could remember seeing anyone look. He said voice soft and eyes downcast, “I have nowhere else to go.”

“Who said you have to go?” Tony shrugged, walking across the room to slip into the lift. As the doors closed, Tony caught the look Loki shot him, confused and wary, but slightly hopeful too. He wanted to ask why the God was here, living on earth for months instead of wherever the fuck else he could be living it up, but he didn’t. Thor had left Asgard for good probably, or at least until Jane died of old age, and Loki was supposed to be dead, obviously he couldn’t just waltz back into the palace without being thrown into a dungeon cell. 

They didn’t talk about it again, and if Tony started buying more extravagant gifts (books straight from the public library, books from museums, books that belonged to private collectors at a price they couldn’t turn down) well they didn’t talk about that either. But Loki smiled at each one, eyes bright and hands shaking as he accepted the gifts, until the day he leant forward to kiss Tony softly. 

“That’s new,” Tony muttered. 

Loki only looked up at him from under his eyelashes, already pulling the wrapping paper from the book and opening the first page. It only took the God half by surprise when the mortal leaned in to kiss him again. 

It wasn’t what Pepper had intended, but at least this way Lukka kept Tony _completely_ out of trouble. There were no more one night stands, no drinking in a bar until 4am and driving the car home under the influence and bribing policemen to let him go. Until eventually Tony was starting to run out of books. It wasn’t that books were in short supply, but rather he had reached the point where he could no longer be elaborate about it. So, he made a few calls, greased a few palms and closed the New York public library for a whole day so that he and Loki could browse it to their hearts content (well, Loki’s heart, because Tony picked a bench and spent most of the day sitting there flicking through his StarkPad). But it hadn’t been all that Tony had hoped it would be. Sure Loki loved looking at the books, but they left the library empty handed (because there were no staff and Loki had frowned on serving himself at the gift shop and Tony hadn’t thought to buy any of the library’s books to give Loki). Loki never made a complaint, in face he was enthusiastically grateful that night when they fell, tangled in each other, into bed. 

The next surprise was better though. 

“Where are we going?” Loki asked for the hundredth time. 

“It’s a surprise.” Tony glanced at his lover, at, if he were honest, the person he loved (not man, not woman, because sometimes Loki was both or either or neither but Tony loved him all the same). “You’re going to love it though. Um,” he trailed off awkwardly, swallowing nervously, “will you tell me why you’re here? I know why you’re _here_ , but I meant on Earth?” 

Loki didn’t answer him, not until Happy stopped the car outside a tiny looking second hand bookstore and Tony had introduced the place with a rushed, “I found it online and it looks awesome and they have loads of antique-style books and sets of books and folios. It’s where I bought your Shakespeare collection.” 

Hand in hand they left Happy in the car, waiting only a moment for the owner to open the door and lock it behind them before Loki pressed a kiss to Tony’s cheek. “I never wanted the throne,” he said at last, fingers already twitching to reach out and touch the books that were so plentiful they didn’t even fit on the shelves. There were baskets on the floor filled with books, stacks of them behind the doors, above the bookcases in piles too, more behind the counter, on the counter, some along a sofa that was obviously meant for customers but had been overrun. “Not really. I just wanted to prove that Thor and I were equal. When I ‘died’ I did so because I knew it was the only way to ensure I wouldn’t end up back in prison, and dying for Thor meant I would be a war hero. I should have been accepted into Valhalla with my m-mother, and that would have pleased Thor.”

“He was pretty broken up about it in all honesty,” Tony butted in. 

Loki gave a snort, ignoring the words because he had already known, had been there to see it and subjected several times to narrow eyed glances as Thor tried to figure out if Lukka was really Loki playing a trick on him. “When I gave the news of my own death to the Allfather he collapsed. That wasn’t what I meant to happen. I only wanted him to thank me, to hold a memorial for me like mother’s one, to love me again. But when he collapsed, what could I do? He was in the Odinsleep and there was no King, so I took up the mantle again, placed myself on the throne and tried to rule well. Then Thor came back, abdicating the throne, and for a horrible moment I wanted it, Tony. I wanted it so much. Then Odin woke up and I knew I couldn’t stay. To think that he would forgive me as fast as he forgave Thor is laughable, but I wanted to very much to make him proud of me. I ruled well, while I ruled, I let no one know of his weakness, I allowed Thor to be happy. Surely when he woke and found me gone and no one having noticed his absence he would have known I was responsible?”

Tony said nothing, but the sad smile on his face made Loki look away from him. “I’m certain he knows I am here, but he has yet to contact me, or offer me any sign that I might be welcomed home if I so chose to return to that life.” 

“Fuck that life,” Tony said at last. When Loki glanced back at him there was a grin on his lover’s face and his brown eyes were bright with mirth. “And fuck your father. Have hers, he’s kind of crazy but he was awesome.” Tony held out a copy of Beauty and the Beast, forcing it into Loki’s hands as the owner of the shop watched them from behind the counter, pretending not to listen. “Or his father. That guy died to save his family,” Tony added, chucking over a copy of the Chamber of Secrets. “No wait, this one first,” he corrected swapping the book for the first in the series. “All of these books, all of these lives to live and love and all of these people waiting to meet you and love you at every turn of every page,” Tony’s voice was soft as he spoke, but certain, determined, and he handed over a battered copy of Inkheart, “all of these futures waiting to bring what they may, why would you want to go back to the past?”

“The past is what shapes us, Anthony,” Loki told him fondly, arms suddenly full of books, “I cannot help but remember it.”

The mortal snorted. He was staring at a blue book with a strange looking silhouette on the front, the letters above and below it intricately curved and embossed with gold. “Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure. She said that once.” He handed over Pride and Prejudice. “Can’t say she didn’t know what she was talking about.” 

“Anthony,” Loki protested, though he took the book after a moment too. “I cannot afford all of these.” Second hand or not, some of them were rather costly, and Tony had refused to let Loki bring his wallet.

“I pay your wages remember. Consider this an advance. Buy the whole place if you feel like it, but you have _got_ to buy this one!” It was a comic book, the words The Invincible Iron Man printed across the top of the front cover and a colourful drawing of the person in question below. “Does my ass look that big in real life?” The drawing was stick his out, legs bent as he prepared to take flight, and Tony glanced over his shoulder, worryingly staring at his own backside. 

“You are a giant ass, but your own is perfect, Tony,” Loki assured him, before getting distracted. He happily collected handfuls of books to browse before he decided which ones he wanted (Tony) to buy. And near the top of the pile sitting just beneath The Invincible Iron Man was a book of fairy tales which all ended with, _and they lived happily ever after_. 

**The End**

Enjoy :)


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